Tuesday, August 07, 2012

I have no idea where it goes, but suddenly we’re into August and it’s hot out and I’ve not been writing again. How does that happen??

I do know that since my job has changed (I’m moving into customer service and slowly trying to get out of bindery… and loving it!), I don’t have as much evening time (instead of 7:30 – 4, I’m now working 8:30 – 5) and the days just seem to fly past. That shouldn’t, however, keep me from blogging, should it?

It certainly doesn’t keep me from knitting, although the temperatures around here are doing a pretty fair job of that. It’s small projects only right now. The 10-stitch blanket is on hold, waiting for cooler weather. Other projects just don’t seem to cut it right now. So…

I found, started, and finished a fun little project over the last couple of weeks. Because it was fairly small, I could work on it even on the hottest of days (except when my hands got all sweaty and the wool got sticky… ew!). The operative word in this paragraph is FUN! Check this out…

Does it get any cuter than this? Really?

This little bear, who doesn’t have a name yet, stands about 12” tall. He (or is it a she?) is made with Fleece Artist Blue Face Leicester DK on 3.5 mm double-pointed needles. The pattern is Vera by Annita Wilschut. I’ve done a couple other patterns by Annita and they’re always so much fun to knit. They’re all done in one piece so there’s no sewing up, just sewing a couple of seams closed (in this case, the crotch seam). Every line of the pattern is written out so there’s no guesswork involved at all and everything is well illustrated, with plenty of pictures. The pattern for this bear was 10 pages long. It isn’t a free pattern but I will say, it’s well worth the $6.00 I paid.

Now comes a rant. On Monday (which was a holiday here), I decided to head over to Michael’s to pick up some two-part safety eyes, some plastic pellets for the feet and another bag of fibrefill. Michael’s is a craft store; you would think doll-making supplies fall under the category of crafts, right? Well, apparently they do not! I could find the fibrefill but when I asked for doll’s eyes, I was shown a section filled with eyes… googly eyes of all shapes and colours, the glue on kind. When I explained that I wanted safety eyes, I got this blank look from the woman helping me. I had to explain what they were and was told, “Oh, no, we don’t carry those.” Alrighty then.

I moved on to the next item on my list. What about plastic pellets for putting into teddy bear legs and bottoms for added weight? Again, I got a blank look and, “If we have those, they’re probably with the quilting stuff.” Quilting stuff??? I walked back to the quilting section, where I’d gotten the fibrefill, returned the fibrefill to it’s rightful place on the shelf (yes, I put it away) and left the store.

I did finally find the safety eyes at Fabricland, and bought some fibrefill there, but even they didn’t have the plastic pellets. I ended up going to Princess Auto and purchasing a couple of large metal washers to put into the bears feet. They give a bit of weight to the feet; I was also hoping they’d help the bear stand on its own, but that didn’t happen. Oh well, I’m VERY happy with how this fun little project turned out and you can almost be guaranteed I’ll make another one or two… some day.